A friend of mine, who's really into drawing an colouring, was complaining about how expensive Photoshop was. When I suggested that she try using Gimp, she commented that it wasn't very friendly. Which, in my opinion, it's about as user friendly as Photoshop is to first time users. Either way, I drew, scanned, then coloured this picture in Gimp to demonstrate a minute example of what it can do an decided I might as well share it here as well. As you will note, my shading skills still suck.

Pre-Gimp

http://img296.imageshack.us/img296/2186/sumomorp7.png

Post-Gimp

http://img296.imageshack.us/img296/6106/sumomo2zj2.png

PS: This is actually the first time I did more then just screw around with Gimp.

PPS: I suppose this should've went under the 'Real World' Header.

Very nice, but you left out the jinglely thingies on the tamborine!

That's cute! Though... why don't her eyes have pupils? It makes her look kinda possessed!

I've also found that GIMP isn't very friendly but, truth be told, I played with it for probably all of 5-10 minutes. I actually found it rather intimidating, so I swapped back to my combo of PSP and Pixia and haven't looked back. It would probably be nice to be able to do all the work in one program rather than switching between them for colouring and touchups, but eh.

Still, I like what you've done with this. Keep working on shading and I'm sure you'll find something that works for you.

... And where -have- I seen that little pink girl?

I agree with Noola. Needs pupils. And that little girl is Sumomo from the anime/manga Chobits. Quite an interesting and funny one, I'm sad I haven't seen more of it.

Aye, Sumomo/Plum is from Chobits. It's a funny, embarassing, and yet engagingly serious story. Though Hideki does shout far to much in the anime.

Thank you for taking time to look and make suggestions, even though she had nothing to do with lusternia. hmm, maybe I can superimpose her over some wings an call her a faeling.

Any how, As for the pupils, adding a light reflection seemed to help a bit, though my updated sig seems to have a little to much white. I was wanting to keep with the artistic style since I was using an actual image as my model. 'Tokyopop's Chobits Vol 3. Pg 29, middle picture in the top row of the six dancing sumomos'

An as simple as the tamborine is... the cymbales... bells... jingly things were making me mad so I just left them out.

When using the gimp, the three seperate windows is rather confusing. Though, when you've orginized it into a comfortable working environment, it's pretty decent. Though a circle, square, or line tool would be nice. Or maybe I just haven't found it them yet. An the gradient tool isn't as easy to use as Photoshop either, still haven't figured out how to add more then two colours.

Here's how I like to lay it out when working.

http://img122.imageshack.us/img122/4589/previewft9.jpg

My task bar is set to auto-hide on the left side of the screen in... case anybody was wondering.